A Magazine for Little Girls Who Want to Grow Up to Be President

Earlier this year, at a bookstore with her 5-year-old daughter, longtime Condé Nast editor Erin Bried had what Oprah Winfrey would call an aha moment. “Every single magazine we picked up for girls had a story on manners, a story on how to have pretty hair, and had a girl on the cover with makeup,” Bried said. “I couldn’t believe that the newsstand was such a depressing place for girls.” She declined to buy Barbie magazine or any other, and left stewing. “We really need to be better for our daughters,” she thought on the walk home. And then, the lightbulb: “Maybe it’s up to me.”

In March, Bried launched a Kickstarter campaign for Kazoo, a new magazine for girls ages 5 to 10 that promises to “inspire them to be smart, strong, fierce, and, above all, true to themselves.” In less than one month, it raised $171,215 and closed as Kickstarter’s highest funded journalism campaign ever, proof positive that there is, indeed, a gaping, glaring need for a new kind of magazine for girls.

The first issue, shipping now, is a revelation, filled with secret codes and scavenger hunts; a new comic by MacArthur Genius and Fun Home author Alison Bechdel; a color- and glitter-by-numbers project by artist Mickalene Thomas; and a maze mapping Diana Nyad’s historic swim from Cuba to Florida. It is all about imagination, adventure, and creativity, and there isn’t a single page about the way a little girl looks. In light of Hillary Clinton’s history-making week, it’s the kind of magazine for girls who want to grow up to be president someday.

Vogue.com spoke with Bried, also the mom of a 1-year-old daughter, about creating Kazoo, encouraging little girls to be loud, and why the magazine is needed now more than ever.

How did you come up with the name?
I was sitting in my daughter’s room and there was a kazoo on her toy shelf—one of those old, classic tin ones. I was like, “That is kind of perfect. It’s fun. It’s loud. Anybody can play a kazoo. You don’t need lessons; you don’t need any skill. If you can breathe, if you can hum, you can play a kazoo.” I feel like it is a nice metaphor for girls’ voices. You’ve got everything it takes to make noise—just do it.I love the message on the cover: “A magazine for girls who aren’t afraid to make some noise.” People criticize Hillary Clinton for speaking too loudly; it’s a particular insult that is levied at women. Were you making that connection?
Absolutely. You’re allowed to be loud, you’re allowed to take up space, you’re allowed to be messy and adventurous, you’re allowed to ask questions. They can say what they want, say what they believe, express themselves without any grain of self-doubt. I think we see in studies that by adolescence there’s a silencing of girls in the classroom; they start dropping out of sports. That is a result of this constant message of self-doubt that we’re sending them. That if you’re loud, if you’re opinionated, then you’re doing it wrong. I feel like any messaging that we can give to girls that they can do and be whatever they want is important. At this point, it’s still radical, which is insane.

Do you have any worries that little girls who are sort of phone- and iPad-obsessed are not going to read a print magazine?
No, I don’t. I feel like kids are craving something they can hold in their hands and flip over and color on. I don’t think print is dead for kids. I know that last year children’s book sales increased by 13 percent. Kids spend, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported, about eight hours a day now on TV and computers. I know most parents want less of that for their kids.

There is nothing in Kazoo about a girl’s appearance—no clothes, makeup, hair, nails. I can only assume that was a conscious decision.
It was absolutely a conscious decision. You’ll also notice there are no pictures of girls in the magazine. I didn’t want our readers to be looking at any story and comparing themselves to someone else. For a story on making a boat, we didn’t picture a girl in a boat, we pictured the boat. The experts who we used—like Meenakshi Wadhwa, the cosmochemist—we got childhood pictures of them and illustrated them throughout the issue as they were as 7-year-olds, 5-year-olds, 10-year-olds, so that our readers could see themselves in these future positions of power. They can think, “She’s just like me; maybe I can be a famous artist” or “Maybe I can be a scientist studying meteorites.”

Earlier this year, around the time your Kickstarter launched, the tween magazine Discovery Girls caused a big stir with a story about “the best swimsuits for your body type.” When you saw that, what was your reaction?
It was shocking to me. An 8-year-old girl should be thinking only about having fun in the water and swimming, splashing, body-surfing, building sandcastles. There should be zero energy spent on how she looks. It was maddening. It was enraging.

Do you think there’s a heightened challenge in raising girls in our world right now, as opposed to boys?
I think all parents have the responsibility to raise their children in a way in which they know that anything is possible for them, that whoever they are, whoever they want to be, is okay. For girls, there are many barriers that they face that boys don’t have to face. A lot of it is, you go to the toy aisle, and it’s pink toys, it’s princesses. If they don’t like that, suddenly, what they love is wrong. Go to the playground: Little girls are screaming, they’re climbing, they’re jumping. They’re active and strong and wild, and it’s wonderful. It’s not until later on in their lives that they start to question this. My dream for every Kazoo reader is, when she’s a little bit older, when she’s reaching adolescence, she feels so strong in herself because she’s seen all of these women role models in the pages of Kazoo, that if anybody tries to make her feel like she’s wrong, or she’s less than, she will not question herself.